The Bone Thief Read online

  The Bone Thief

  BREEANA SHIELDS

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  Dedication

  To Ben,

  who first made me a mother

  Chapter One

  I have blood on my hands.

  I stand in the Forest of the Dead, next to our family tree, a knife dangling from my fingers. My palms are raw and seeping. I’ve been digging into the bark for nearly an hour, and I’ve only managed to carve a shallow furrow. I didn’t think it would be so difficult, but Gran once told me these trees were special—strengthened by the magic of the bones that have hung here for generations. And these branches have seen more power than most.

  A bead of sweat slips from the nape of my neck down my spine. I slide to the ground and rest my back against the tree trunk.

  Summer has given way to fall, and the trees are aflame with hues of red and orange, as if the whole forest is on fire. It makes me feel as if I’m inside a bone reading, seeing all of my possible futures, dozens of paths stretching before me.

  But my mother isn’t on a single one of them.

  It’s not just that she’s dead; it’s so much worse than that. She’s also missing.

  Latham stole her body, and if I don’t find her bones, she’s lost to me forever. I think of how Gran’s bones were used for my kenning, of how her gran’s bones were used for hers. Our entire family is sealed together this way—the bones of one generation guiding the fate of another. If I can’t get my mother back, whose bones will be used for my own daughter’s kenning? Will they belong to a stranger? Someone who never stroked her hair when she was ill? Who never looked into her eyes after a nightmare to tell her she was safe? Who never loved her?

  With a start I realize that even if I do manage to find my mother’s bones, she will never comfort my daughter like Gran comforted me. Never hear the sound of her laugh or clean her sticky fingers. Death is one cruel revelation after another, unfolding like a map of heartache with ever-expanding borders. And now this: My mother will never know my daughter.

  Then again, maybe I won’t survive to have a daughter at all.

  Grief and rage combine and swell in my throat. My fist clenches tightly around the knife in my hand. I tilt my head toward the sky, and a single crimson leaf drifts onto my shoulder.

  Autumn used to be my favorite time of year. I found it poetic—the fierce, bold colors of leaves just before they tremble from their branches and die. As if the last moments of life were the most powerful of all.

  But now I prefer the tender, gentle colors of spring.

  I shift my body so the leaf floats to the forest floor. The air is heavy with the scent of rot. A few rows away, a burlap sack hangs from a sturdy branch. Inside is the body of Eli Higgins, who took his last breath two weeks ago. And in another tree nearby is Hester Ollif, whose heart stopped beating just yesterday. Both trees are draped in colorful blossoms, the names of the deceased freshly carved into the trunks below other family members who have gone before. At least a dozen trees across the forest are burdened with the bones of the dead.

  But our tree is empty. There’s no place to hold my sorrow.

  I stand and brush the dust from my skirt. A sudden awareness prickles at the base of my skull and I freeze. Gooseflesh races up my arms. It’s a sensation I’ve experienced multiple times in the last few weeks. It feels like a pair of eyes are focused on my back. Like a breath at my collar. Like someone is watching me.

  I spin around, but no one is there. It’s just my imagination. Just the fear of Latham’s last threat: I’ll see you soon, Saskia. You can count on it.

  Each night since my mother’s death I’ve had the same nightmare. Just as I drift off, my mind replays each detail of her murder. Latham thrusting a knife through her back. Her eyes going wide with shock before she falls into my arms. Her blood thick on my fingers.

  Then the dream shifts to a place I’ve never seen before: a room full of spell books and bones, incense and strange weapons. Latham strides toward me—a Mason-crafted sword in his hand—a look of such dark delight in his eyes that it makes my blood run cold. Each time, I know I’m about to die, but I wake just before the blade falls.

  Latham is coming for me. Even when I try to forget, my mind reminds me in my sleep.

  And now I’m imagining things that aren’t there while I’m awake, too.

  My heart pounds, jackrabbit fast, but I pull in slow, deep breaths until I’m steadier. Then I lift the knife in my fist and begin to scrape at the trunk again, deepening the groove I created earlier. Usually Oskar, the master of the bone house, carves the names of the deceased into the bark when he hangs the burlap bag from one of the branches. But there is no bag to hang, no bones to prepare. I set off for Ivory Hall tomorrow, and I can’t bear to leave an empty space where my mother’s name should be; I may not have her body, but I won’t rob her of the honor of being remembered.

  I scrape into the wood until the joints in my fingers scream in pain. Oskar must have better tools for carving than my father’s old knife.

  A throat clears behind me. “Saskia?”

  I turn to find Bram, his brown eyes soft with concern. A bright spark of surprise goes through me. “You’re back,” I say. Bram came to Midwood after my mother died, but only stayed a short time before returning to Ivory Hall to finish his first-term exams. I’ll be joining the apprentices for the second term, so I didn’t expect to see him until then. “What are you doing here?”

  “Norah sent me back to travel with you.” He gives me a wry smile. “I think she’d feel better if every Breaker in Kastelia were by your side.”

  Norah is Steward of Ivory Hall. She offered me a placement to train as a Bone Charmer, and wanted me to go to the capital immediately after the funeral, but I needed time to grieve. And time to figure out how I’m going to hide the fact that I’m both more and less qualified than Norah thinks; I already have a Bone Charmer mastery tattoo because my mother was training me in secret, but I lied about being matched as a Charmer. I wasn’t. Not in this reality, at least.

  “I think Norah just feels guilty that one of her instructors murdered my family,” I say, dragging the toe of my boot through the pile of leaves at my feet.

  A shadow falls over Bram’s expression. “Maybe that’s part of it, but she also cares. You’ll see once you get to know her better.” He rakes his fingers through his hair—a gesture I feel like I’ve seen a hundred times. I’ve known him for years, so it shouldn’t shock me that he’s so familiar. But it’s how familiar that both thrills and unsettles me. Because it’s not our childhood that taught me the planes of his cheekbones, the angle of his jaw, the way he strums his fingers when he’s nervous. It’s the vision of my other path I saw in Gran’s healed bone. A different possibility, one Bram has never seen. To him, I’m just a girl who once judged him unfairly. But to me …

  “Anything I can do to help?” he asks, his gaze skipping between the blade in my hand and the tree behind me.

  Suddenly an image of his lips on mine
rises in my memory. Heat floods my face. I bite the inside of my cheek and hope he doesn’t notice.

  He cocks his head to the side and gives me a quizzical look. “Unless you want to be alone? I don’t mean to intrude.”

  He’s misread my discomfort. Good.

  “You’re not intruding.” I hold out the knife to him. As he takes it, his thumb feathers along the love tattoo on my wrist and I inhale sharply.

  Bram’s eyes go wide, as if he’s just as shocked by the touch as I am. He snatches his hand away. “Do you …” He pulls on the back of his neck. “Do you miss him?”

  At first, I’m confused by the question. And then I realize he’s talking about Declan. Of course Bram would think that’s where I got the love tattoo; Declan and I were matched at the kenning. But still, the thought makes my stomach clench.

  “No,” I say, “not even a little.” Declan’s betrayal feels like a fresh burn that can’t withstand even the lightest contact without stinging. “I just miss my mother.” What I don’t say: I also miss the future you and I never had. A thousand images of Bram jostle in my mind—they’re almost, but not quite, memories; almost, but not quite, mine. Some are blurry and indistinct, and others are vivid and alive with color. But together they’re a storm of confusion that rages in my chest.

  I can’t afford to fall for him. The love tattoo is a remnant from my other path, so given time, it should fade. Things that aren’t nurtured eventually wither. Latham is far less likely to kill me if it disappears.

  Bram gives me another odd look, as if I’m a puzzle he can’t quite figure out. He turns the knife over in his hand, examining the blade.

  “This isn’t bone-made,” he says. “And it’s also too dull. You’ll be here all night.”

  I shrug. “It’s all I had.”

  He slides the leather satchel from around his neck and digs through it, producing a small bone-handled folding knife. He opens the blade and inclines his head toward the tree. “May I?”

  I nod and step aside. Bram holds the knife perpendicular to the ground and carves my mother’s name in deft, confident strokes. My gaze wanders to the muscles in his arm, flexing as he works.

  When he finishes, he turns toward me. “How is that?”

  He’s engraved my mother’s name—DELLA HOLTE—in neat block letters, along with her death date.

  Warmth spreads through my chest. “Perfect,” I say, my voice catching a little. “Thank you.”

  My fingers twitch—longing to reach for him—but I shove them into my pockets. We’re about to spend weeks together on a ship to Ivory Hall. And after seeing a glimpse of what we could have been together, it will be so hard not to rely on Bram for comfort. Not to feel his hand fold around mine like a promise to double my joy and divide my pain. But I have to try.

  My life depends on it.

  Ami and I wander arm in arm through the streets of Midwood. The sun sits low on the horizon and the sky is awash in shades of pink and gold. We’ve been trying to say goodbye for hours, but neither of us can seem to find the words. So we keep walking, keep chatting about mundane things, as if we’ll be together forever. As if I won’t sail away tomorrow and Ami will stay here and for the first time in our lives we won’t see each other every day.

  As much as I want to pretend things are normal, I can’t.

  Everywhere I turn, I see the ghosts of my family—my mother coming out of the Marrow, a stone basin tucked beneath her arm like it weighs no more than a feather; Gran heading into the Sweet Tooth to buy the lemon-flavored candies she favored; my father fishing on the banks of the Shard, a contented smile on his face. The memories fill me with bittersweet longing.

  But other images crowd in too—Declan threading his fingers through mine, making promises he had no intention of keeping; standing beside my mother in the bone house, gazing into the empty box where Papa’s remains should have been; walking into my own home, what had always been a cocoon of safety and love, to see Latham with a blade at my mother’s throat.

  Midwood won’t ever be the same. I can’t imagine staying. And yet I can’t bear the thought of leaving, either.

  We end up on the riverbank, as if our feet carried us there by habit. But it’s too cold to peel off our boots and sink our feet into the water. So we sit in the grass, bundled in our warm cloaks.

  Ami nudges my shoulder gently with her own. “What are you thinking?”

  Finally an honest question. She must sense the time slipping away too, like water held in cupped hands, seeping through our fingers no matter how desperately we try to hold on.

  So I give her an honest answer. “I’m just wishing I weren’t such a coward.”

  She turns to me, her eyes wide with surprise. “Why would you say that?”

  I run my hands over the grass, letting the blades slide between my fingers. “I’m scared all the time, Ami.”

  She’s quiet for a moment. “Of what?”

  I sigh. There are so many answers to that question. “What if the Grand Council finds out my mother illegally trained me? Her reputation will be ruined.” I bite my lip. “Or they could punish me.”

  “Everything will be fine,” Ami says. “They have no way of knowing unless you tell them.”

  I give her a pointed look. “Yes, they do.”

  “Saskia!” Ami looks stricken. “I would never betray your trust like that.”

  I roll my eyes and tug her dark, glossy braid playfully. “Not you. My mastery tattoo.”

  But an uncomfortable realization uncoils in my chest. Ami isn’t the only one who knows I’ve used unbound magic. My fingers clench around a fistful of grass.

  “No one is going to examine you for unexpected tattoos,” Ami says, interrupting my thoughts. She’s right. Tattoos are considered deeply personal, and it’s rude to ask about them.

  A relieved breath sags out of me. “I worried my trainer might, as a way to gauge my progress.”

  A shadow falls over Ami’s face. “Oh.”

  “Has Oskar asked about your mastery tattoo?”

  Her hand closes around mine. “Not right at first. But yes, eventually.” She squeezes my fingers. “Don’t worry, though. By the time anyone asks, you will have been bound to bone charming long enough that no one will be suspicious. Just make sure to keep it hidden until then.”

  I’m suddenly grateful the weather has shifted. It won’t be unusual for me to wear long sleeves until spring, and by then my mastery tattoo will no longer be incriminating.

  “Bram knows too,” I say softly.

  Her mouth falls open. “About the tattoo?”

  “No, but he knows I used unbound magic. I did a bone reading in front of him last spring after my mother died. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  For the first time, Ami’s expression mirrors the tumult raging in my chest.

  “Will he say anything?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. I’d like to think he won’t, but he’s not the same person in this reality. Latham was mentoring him.”

  She bites her thumbnail. “That’s not good. But he didn’t know what Latham was capable of, right?”

  “I don’t know what he knew,” I say. “I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”

  “Trust yourself,” she says. “Trust your gut.”

  “That’s what I did with Declan and look how that turned out.”

  Her eyes go soft. “Not everyone is Declan.”

  “No one else is you, either.”

  Her lower lip trembles and she wraps me in an embrace. I hold her extra tightly, until she finally pulls away and gives me an evaluating look.

  “Maybe all this worry is just a proxy for what’s really bothering you,” she says.

  I give a harsh laugh. “You’re right. I’m worrying about nothing—unbound magic isn’t that illegal, my mother’s bones aren’t that lost, the Charmer determined to kill me isn’t that evil.”

  She purses her lips and glares at me. “Are you done?”

  “Yes,” I say. “So what
do you think is really bothering me?”

  “I think you’re trying to avoid how much leaving Midwood will make you feel even further away from your mother when you’re missing her so much already.”

  Tears prickle at the backs of my eyes. This is so like Ami. To take my worries from me, package them in her unique brand of love, and hand them back to me in a way that makes me feel truly seen.

  “What if this is a huge mistake?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s not. You’re doing the right thing, Sas. Talk to Bram. Ask him to keep your confidences. And then find your mother’s bones and bring her home.”

  The twilight melts into darkness, and finally we walk back to my house, where we talk until we drift off to sleep.

  I wake at dawn and gather my things, moving as silently as I can. Then I pause and let my eyes scan across this room with so many memories. My parents cozied in front of the hearth, giggling and whispering like a pair of intendeds even though they’d been married for years. Sitting near the window with Gran while she brushed my hair in long, careful strokes. My mother hunched over her spell book, her lips pursed in concentration.

  And now Ami, lying with her hands pillowed beneath her cheek, her face smooth and unworried in sleep. I rest my palm gently on the crown of her head, careful not to disturb her. If she wakes and I have to say goodbye again, I won’t be able to force myself to leave.

  My whole life, I’ve wanted nothing more than to stay in Midwood forever. But now, if I want to find my mother’s and Gran’s bones, I have no choice but to leave. I’m standing at the intersection of twin miseries—no matter which way I turn, sadness will follow.

  Right now, Ami is the only person in the world I trust.

  And I have to leave her behind.

  Chapter Two

  I was worried about time alone with Bram on the journey to the capital, but it turns out I have the opposite problem. I barely see him at all. Norah sends a wing-fleet vessel full of Breakers from the Ivory Guard to escort us to Kastelia City. I’m constantly under watch, and Bram spends most of his time playing games of dice with the crew and the off-duty Breakers.